


The People Eater and Obesity

by mx_vertiginous



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Math, Meta, Meta Analysis, Nonfiction, Other, Symbolism, archive, obesity, tumblr purge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 08:19:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17019105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mx_vertiginous/pseuds/mx_vertiginous
Summary: A discussion of the People Eater's obesity in Mad Max Fury Road.Originally posted on Tumblr 2016, archived Dec. 2018.





	The People Eater and Obesity

**Part I.**  
This is probably going to be a multi-part series about The People Eater and ideas around obesity in fictional characters. But I’m going to start this out at what may be an unusual point.

I’m pretty sure the People Eater is not ‘obese’ in the traditional sense, where we think of someone as having excess body fat. The excessive bloating we see on his lower limbs in the movie looks a lot more like lymphedema, edema secondary to another disease (like thyroid disease, kidney failure or heart failure) or a form of elephantisis or other excess tissue growth. None of these disease processes or sequelae create excess body fat, they are simply accumulations of fluid or tissue. It is ‘obesity’ only in the roughest sense of being a particular relationship between a person’s height and their mass. But it has nothing to do with what or how much a person eats or how much they move, and it has nothing to do with adipose tissue (fat). It is a function of an independent disease process. 

This is important, because the mass of his foot is a plot point (when Max jams his foot onto the accelerator), but I think it’s important to realize that the mass of his foot is not at all a sign of him having a lot of fat tissue, but that specific feature is much, much more likely to be a sign that he has a severe, possibly end-stage disease. And George Miller knew this, he’s a doctor. He knows the difference between simple obesity and severe edema of the lower limbs. The leg/foot prosthetic we see in the movie is pretty clearly the latter.

* * *

**Part II.**  
So, a few more words I’ve been meaning to say about the idea that The People Eater’s obesity represents gluttony, luxury and excess in the Wasteland. Today we’re going to do a little math and think about that.

Just a primer on some of the abbreviations I’ll be using.

BMR - Basal Metabolic Rate. This is the amount of calories your body uses to just lay in bed all day long.

TDEE - Total Daily Energy Expenditure. This is the amount of calories your body uses to go about your normal daily activities, which might be light office work or it might be heavy manual labor or some combo of the two.

And as a side note: A calorie is a unit of energy in food, used by your body to keep you alive. Calories aren’t a moral judgement of “good” or “bad”… they’re just energy.

I’m going to take a couple guesses at John Howard because I can’t find his info. Just as round figures I’m going to guess him to be 6′ tall and about 260lbs. This would give him a BMI of 35, solidly in the middle of the “obese” category. So how much energy does it take to keep his body alive? Well, his BMR (what it takes to lay in bed all day) is about 2260 calories a day. And if he’s doing light office work, but still getting some light exercise just navigating Gastown, his TDEE would be around 3100. (Note, someone 20lbs heavier would only up those numbers by about 100-150 calories.)

Now. Let’s think about Rictus. Nathan Jones is 7′ tall and 350lbs. He also has a BMI around 35, although in his case it’s more muscle than fat. His BMR comes in at around 3075, way above The People Eater, and given a guess that he does an hour or two of exercise a day to keep all that muscle, his TDEE is more like 5300. Clearly, of the two, Rictus represents a greater luxury of food energy than The People Eater does.

And then we think about their value. The People Eater seems to serve as the Wasteland’s accountant. In a world where everyone else seems to be burning through their oh-so-precious resources, he’s the only one that cares about the cost of it all. Now accountants are for sure, not the sexiest people. But a fair and clear eyed accounting of resources is essential to managing a society. For 3245 units of food energy a day, you buy yourself an accountant.

OTOH… what is Rictus? He’s pretty much his father’s id. Unbridled emotion. We never see him doing any actual work. And yet, his father invests 5300 units of food energy a day in… uh… a dude who shoots a lot of wasted bullets into the air when his stepmother dies. 

And because you’re probably going to ask, what about the War Boys. Well, taking Josh Helman as an example (because I was able to find his stats easy), you’re looking at a BMR around 1700 and a TDEE of around 2950. That’s assuming no need for extra calories to support malignancy which has a tendency to up calorie needs. 

So yeah… The People Eater is not a symbol of unchecked gluttony. If you go by the numbers, Rictus is. But people in our society think that his body type is more attractive, so they automatically assign that it’s own worthiness.


End file.
